The Eastern Mountain
by sorceress2
Summary: Based on the novel "La Bataille" by Claude Farrere, this story details the ill-fated love of an English Officer for a Japanese noblewoman. She is nicknamed "Mitsouko," meaning mystery.
1. The Olden

The Eastern Mount

She dwells among the shadows of the East

The cool primeval pines of the highest mounts

Whisper her name softly like the wind.

We, we come like the thunder of guns

The lightning of artillery and cannon

Silences voices and silences the ancients.

I bridge the worlds and make them whole

Demand their fealty, honor, and tribute

She vanishes from us once again.

The Eastern Mount

Chapter One: The Old

She came among them like a spirit and a shadow, always pale and lovely and mysterious. Her cool silver voice that fell like water on the ear and murmured soft on the heart, was faint and fascinating. Her husband was the last of the shoguns of old Imperial Japan, and whenever she raised her unsettling violet eyes, it seemed that the old days and old ways were reaffirmed again. Whenever some of the rebellious young ones declared the ways of honor and bushido obsolete, they had only to look into her eyes and their protestations were silenced.

It would have been impossible to describe her fittingly, the perfection with which the grand minimalistic palaces of exquisitely grained wood and pale unadorned stone fit her. She floated among the walkways that boasted almost no ornamentation, but possessed a grace in form that was adornment it itself. Their plainness was their beauty, indescribably soothing and graceful. But she belonged to them, and they to her, in an unknown primal fashion which cannot be explained by modern logic.

It was the summer of her seventeenth year, the fourth year of her marriage to Hidekei, when she was to set sail for Kyoto, the ancient capital of the emperors. There, the pale-haired barbarians to the West had come, come to demand fealty, honor, and tribute. There would she meet the red-coated men who did not wear robes and wore hair on their face. They too, had come from an island and they too, believed themselves to be the kings of the world.


	2. The Blue Fire

White flower

Who graces us

Fall slow

To the ground

As the words

Here briefly flash

Gently descend

Ever slower

To the end,

So that

Your beauty

Shall live

More vibrant

Suspended in air

More precious,

More beautiful,

All the longer.

Chapter 2: The Blue Fire

Kyoto had a stench that was truly unbearable. Pigs and children squalled equally in squalor and filth, and strange foreign ladies in grotesque creations of chiffon and taffeta bedecked with feathers wandered about without escort. Beady-eyed men watched with glittering eyes and the fumes and smoke of boats without sails clogged the air.

She was very glad that she was veiled heavily, all in pale white like a ghost, or a flower. Her mother had always chided her because she loved to wear white, cool as water and clean like mountain air. It had made her feel cleansed and pure, no matter where she was or what happened. Wondrous white and silver embroidery covered the outer robe, and pale spider web embroidery over the sheer veils made of silk tissue, so fragile that after three hand-washes it was ruined.

The five story mansion was in the center of what was locally called the Golden Lane, because gold and silver and enormous sums were dealt so frequently. She and Hidekei entered with their servants into the echoing front hall, and he left immediately, without even a glance for her, to a meeting with these new foreigners. His back was rigid and cold, and she sighed. Love would come with time, her mother had reminded her. But for the present, it was all she could do to be obedient and draw him into her bed as often as possible to beget an heir for him. In this way, he would love his son-for it was no question that she would have to bear one- and come to love the woman who had borne him. However she shuddered and retched afterwards, it had to be done.

These foreigners, they were all enormously tall, like trees, and dressed in the red and gold of a uniform. Strangely, they were all very young. None could have seen his twenty-fifth winter, and she raised her chin coldly as they all turned to look at her. Their eyes followed her veil, as if they could pierce it and actually see her face. Well, the invaders would not be honored with the sight of her face.

Three maidservants surrounded her to adjust the outer robe and inner, the veil and headdress, and a harsh order in their language was barked by another voice, deep and very young, and they all made their peculiar bows and snapped to attention.

A man who had been a boy very lately strode in with a dark scowl, the one who had spoke the military order. She understood the rudiments of English, and even to her ear, his intonation was precise and beautiful. He had tall shoulders with muscles almost too heavy for gentility, perfectly proportioned from his head to his feet. His hair was black, but surely no one could have mistaken him for being Japanese. He was glaring down at the floor from his formidable height and when his eyes raised, they were a dark, raging blue fire that seemed to frighten his soldiers. There could have been no question of his superiority, for his very air and bearing spoke of it, and the ornate manner of his coat, his saber, and his golden spurs.

Another order that was issued curtly turned the soldiers to the door and marched them out in perfect unity, much like the orderly text of English marching across a page. He turned to regard her with those raging eyes, and he lowered himself to a bow and a nod, and turned with that military precision again to march out of the door.

In that moment of foreboding, a brief flash of childish fancy and premonition, she knew that he would hold great importance to her life. And the flash flew, as she scolded herself for the adolescent silliness she exhibited. He was a stranger, a foreigner, as far removed from her world as he could be. There could be nothing between them.

A Message to a Faithful Reader:

Dear Hally Dang,

Mitsouko is a perfume made by the famous Guerlain, imperial perfumer to the Empress Eugenie of Napoleon's French Empire. Guerlain is still a famous house of perfumery today. The author of "La Bataille," Claude Farrere, was a friend of Guerlain's, so Guerlain honored him by naming a perfume after one of his ill-fated characters, Mitsouko, which means "mystery." Of course, in this story Mitsouko is only a nickname, but your guess is as good as mine as to who it is. ;)

P.S. I am honored to have the devotion with which you read my works. I am glad that you still read the old masters of like Kit Spooner, Ekai Ungson, and Chelle-sama, since some of the new works have been honestly maudlin. I have to confess, however, that my talent with the written word has waned of late, and I might not have the flair with which I once wrote. I will apologize now if my work is not up to par.


	3. The Ivory Fan

You saw her bathing on the roof  
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you  
She tied you to a kitchen chair  
She broke your throne, she cut your hair  
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.

Excerpt from _Hallelujah_, Rufus Wainwright

Chapter 3: The Ivory Fan

Her maids had tittered and gossiped over the very young foreign captain who was so beautiful in the face. Always like the gabble of geese that she could almost ignore, but not quite, they speculated on whether he had a wife, or perhaps if loneliness would drive him to find a wife here.

Finally, she snapped at them. They filed out obediently and abashedly, leaving her alone to wait for her hair to dry. Washing her hair often meant a long, arduous process, for it was by now longer than she was tall. Sections were sorted out and then washed several times. Then it was air-dried like dark linen and dried as best it could. It was almost dried, and floated up like wisps of black silk in the wind. It felt so light and one of the women said that it was running one's fingers through water.

She had always loved her hair, loved the feel of it against her face and how it fell in graceful waves around her, like she was bathing in a sea of dark waves. How she wished that she needn't put it up into a stiff hairstyle of boning, supports, and ointments to make it stay in an artificial shape. The feel of it in the spring wind, even in the dusty city, felt delicious. She used her ivory fan to fan herself, as the sun became stronger.

Lazy birds called raucously, and the scent of green things in the private garden drifted towards her. How wonderful it was, she thought, to sit in this garden drifting with plum blossoms and smell the green and feel her hair as light as air against her face.

Footsteps on the grass behind her gave her warning that someone else had joined her. It was the young foreign captain and he looked as angry as he was the day she arrived. Luckily, he did not see her in only her sheer under-robe as he sat heavily on the bench by the fountain. He sat there, staring moodily into the little babbling brook, with floating lotus flowers drifting gently.

He stood again, as if too angry to sit for long, and paced restlessly. Unfortunately at that moment, her fan dropped from her lap as she moved to push her hair back. His head whipped around to examine the noise and his eyes traveled up the trunk of the tree to the branch where she was sitting.

She blushed. Of all things, what a sight she must be! Dressed only in a violet under-robe and perched on a tree branch, of all things, with her long waves of hair billowing softly around her like her enormous long robe. Both were carried upon the wind and drifted like clouds, sunset purple and dark. Her face was unpainted and naked to the world, with her pale-colored freckles evident without the white lead paint. And surrounding her, were green leaves and little purple blossoms, and the evening birds called to each other softly.

His eyes stayed on her as he approached. It were as if she could feel them like a touch, intent and hot. He stopped short of the tree, to wait for her to descend from her perch, but she did not. His eyes were trained on her, unblinking in their blue intensity.

As he proffered her fan, she blushed pale pink. He smirked with an arrogance she had never seen.

"Rest safe, my glorious lady, for your virtue is safe with me." His deep voice seemed to vibrate within her. She tilted her chin coldly.

"I do not need your protection, whatever it may be." She retorted, carefully enunciating the difficult words.

And the spell of the moment was broken, as her handmaidens reentered to see their young mistress reclined on a tree branch, with pale purple robes and dark hair drifting in the wind, and a young, frightening foreigner regarding her as if seeing a goddess for the first time. They surrounded her, made shooing motions at him, and three gently lifted her off of the branch like a butterfly softly descending to a green earth.

She turned her head slightly to indicate his audience with her, if it could be called that, was over. In turn, his knowing smile came and he bowed with almost an exaggerated courtesy to her.

"My little lady Mitsouko, light of my life, what have you done?" Her scandalized nurse asked. The pet name she had given her, Mitsouko, meant "mystery," for when young she disappeared and reappeared like a phantom, a little mystery no one could fathom or find. There were few who truly knew her name, and even that nurse did not. As the protected daughter of a feudal lord, even names could be a danger to her. Now only her surviving family knew that name: Her sister. Her mother had died in childbirth, of their eighth child, and their father in an enemy ambush was cut down with a sword, her three brothers, dead as infants or children. Two more sisters were dead in a strange virulent disease during their fifteenth year, and the remaining brother was alive, thank the gods, to inherit the ancient ancestral seat. He, however, was removed from her, being much older and not inclined to affection. Thus, he only knew her as "The lovely sister Mitsouko, who had the secret name, whom he has not seen for ten years."

And thus was she given into a loveless marriage with the remote Hidekei.


	4. The Spider's Webs

T'is not too late to seek a newer world.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Chapter Four: The Spider's Webs

It was from a chattering maid that she learned of her husband's plans for their future. The tides of the sea had turned to the British, and the glory of their empire had risen like a victorious sun, and stolen the victorious sun of Japan. They had taken Japanese honor and pride, and forced a humiliating sphere of influence upon it. No longer did Japan rule itself, but rather puppet shoguns and provincial governors were more and more influenced and coerced by foreign interests, political and economic, until even the emperor himself was directly under Anglo-American control. And all around the world, the empires of the Western nations rose. The British controlling the entire Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the isles of Malaysia, and now they were to take Japan, too.

And this was the wave that Hidekei had sought to ride, to grasp at the opportunities provided by the disruption of the status quo and carve out new estates and new fortunes. Mitsouko knew that her husband would succeed, playing at this new foreign-controlled game with sharp and deadly skill, ruthlessly crushing complaint and opposition.

He was smiling smugly when he had received a missive from the British captain-general of the troops stationed in Kyoto.

"This day with the captain-general will show these British barbarians what kind of civilization we have, eh? His wife and the wife of other officials will be coming and I will show them what sort of women we have. If our inferior sex is greater than their men, it will only prove how pathetic their society is. Is that not so, lady wife?"

He had brusquely informed her that she was to practice at all of her talents so she could make him look all the better during the meeting with the foreigners. She had bowed gracefully with her usual dignity, and set forth to follow his instructions. Let them come, she thought, and see what superiority the East had.

She aired her white silk robes, wondrous fabrics as transparent as water, embroidered with a faint orchid design. White and thread-of-silver brocades, white velvets and a hundred robes of white, each lighter than air. Let them come and see in raiment like spider webs, one outfit that had cost a fortune. Let them see.


	5. Shogun

The single bloom is more exquisite

Perched upon a bleak precipice,

Softly tremulous upon the blade's edge

And disdaining that suitor named death.

Chapter 5: Shogun

Even from far across the bridge and over the soft murmuring of the little brook underneath, the visitors could hear and feel the deep reverberations of the drums. Beating steadily like the human heart, but deeper, more all pervasive like the heartbeat of the mother earth. The little boats one by one scraped gently upon the shore, the soft green-filtered light from the primeval pines above gently undulating upon them.

These foreigners seemed mildly curious, piqued even. From her high perch she could see not only the Englishmen and their wives, but a deep-skinned man with a turban, his lady wife draped in gaudily gold-fringed cloths and dripping golden jewelry, and her two maidservants. Mitsouko frowned briefly, for she had never seen anyone of such nationality before. Their gloriously scarlet-outfitted escort consisted of the foreign captain who had seen her in the garden and twenty men, and they marched with ceremonial sobriety up the two hundred steps of the Shinto temple, to see the enormous flared rooftops rise like a giant before them, looming darkly but with restful, awe-inspiring grace. A murmur passed through the little crowd, of the beauty of the temple. Hidekei merely smiled smugly, and beckoned in his guests.

After being seated around a low table- with many of the foreign women grumbling about the indecency of sitting oneself on the ground, although the foreign lady in gold seemed to have no trouble about it- Hidekei raised his arms and said,

"Lady wife, with the mysterious name, please come and meet our guests."

She had been concealed from the guests so far, and hesitated at appearing unveiled, but it was what Hidekei had ordered. When she did not immediately appear, he cleared his throat, as if prompting her. So as the foreigners were distracted by his clearing of the throat, she jumped down from her perch on a ceiling beam and seemed to materialize out of nowhere.

One of the foreign ladies gasped at her sudden appearance, and even a few soldiers looked on guard because of her mysterious entrance. She bowed low, and a soft breeze carried up her multitudes of silk gauze up into the air, floating like a ghost.

"Please be welcome." She said carefully and slowly. She clapped her hands and servants brought out tea and implements. However, there were no cups. So with a quick flick of her wrist, a tiny, blue-veined porcelain cup seemed to magically appear with each movement. The men seemed mesmerized, and the women seemed cautious of her. She poured and served, and quietly took a seat behind her husband at her favorite instrument. Her husband's instructions had been most specific. Now, there was only the last cue to wait for. As soon as he opened his mouth, she struck the exposed strings of the dulcimer with a dramatic chromatic scale, and played softly to accompany his speech.

It seemed that during the length of the negotiation for the future of Japan, the foreign captain, important enough to be seated at the table, glanced at her too often for hapstance. More than once their gaze met, and she always was the first to lower hers, cheeks stained pink. Sometimes when she raised her eyes again, he was still staring at her.

Within the lulls of the conversation, she would play louder, and as soon as one's mouth would move, she would quickly dim the sound of the strings. Within one such lull, she played quicker and quicker, but abruptly, she stopped with a discordant crash.

Hidekei looked around with a displeased manner. But in front of guests, he could not yell at her or hit her. His smile seemed frozen as he looked at her questioningly, with a hint of menace.

"Lady wife?"

But she was not even aware he had spoken. She was staring straight ahead, at something that she thought she was seeing. And quicker than a blink, she had whirled to her feet and snatched up a curved sword on her way.

As she landed so softly that there was no sound but a faint rustle of fine silks, there was a moment of confusion. Had Hidekei's wife become mad, to suddenly leap at nothing? But in the very next moment, the end of an arrow clattered with an inelegant noise to the stone floor, severed in half by her sword. Hidekei leapt to his feet, and screamed,

"It is the old guard! Where are the temple monks?"

Mitsouko felt a stab of terror. The old guard opposed the modernity sweeping the nation, and thus had set out by way of assassination to stop it, and Hidekei was high on their list. It was not unfeasible for them to have killed everyone on the temple grounds to reach him.

The captain had his sword out so fast that in one moment it was sheathed in its sheath, and the next the naked blade was out at a fighting stance. He barked quick orders for his soldiers to secure the perimeter. Before any had left the temple, however, another arrow, whose flight had been blocked by the milling soldiers and hysterical ladies took one of them down. The English ladies began to scream, and the foreign couple started for the door.

The assassins came from every direction, and those who were not immediately slaughtered had a choice to fight or flee. As they were greatly outnumbered, the captain beheaded with a quick stroke an assassin who had just killed the foreign lady, and pushed his way through several soldiers to her. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out.

"Stop it! Stop it and unhand me, you disgusting brute!" She kicked him viciously in the shins when he took away her sword. No one had ever done that to her before, but sadly, he only grunted as she kicked him with all of her might.

"We're leaving, and you are going to need to shut up." She did her best to punch him in the stomach. He grabbed her hand and twisted her wrist until tears came to her eyes. As he released her, she was thinking of how long it would take her to choke him, and if Hidekei would still be alive in that time, or if she should skip the choking and get him right away. But he was certainly capable of caring for himself.

That thought drained away as she saw him disappear under a group of five black-clad men.

"Hidekei!" She screamed. Kicking and struggling, the captain grunted again and told her to shut up, for the love of god.

He winced as she screamed directly in his ear.

"Good God." He muttered pessimistically.

"Look, will you stop with that infernal noise? I'm trying to save you, you know. There's no need to carry on." He stated coldly.

"My husband, he's dying, you idiot! Those assassins must have hit your head one too many times, because you obviously have lost all capability of using it!"

He rolled his eyes.

"I once saw your husband dispatch six men by himself. And you are a woman."

"And you might as well be one, for all the help you are!"

"Don't forget, madam, who your brother is. There would be a far greater price on your head, than his. At least it is more difficult to torture a man." He ground out, with a dark meaningful look. She closed her mouth. How dare he speak of such unspeakable topics to her, even in insinuation!

Before she could vent her indignation, he had a silver whistle that he blew, and horses, trained like dogs, were galloping over the ridge from the direction of the brook. Apparently, he and his escort had ridden along the brook. He tossed her on one horse, and hauled a cowering maidservant and her foreign mistress out of a bush. He set them on another, and took a third one and a spare. He surveyed the still-raging fight and saw only the dead or dying, but with some black-clad men heading towards them at a run.

"Damnation. Let us hope that they have no horses." So he spurred the horses, all of them, and headed for the pines.

Mitsouko looked back, but he tersely told her to keep her eyes on the road ahead.

"What is done is done, my lady. Better to first think of the living, then of the dead."

So she turned around, and watched as the pines seemed to rise above them, seemed to suddenly pierce heavenwards. May the Gods help Japan, and bless his soul, Hidekei. For although she could not bear to pray for him, he who would betray the soul of their Japan, she could ask the Gods in her stead.


End file.
